Works from artists have been adapted for the silver screen since the inception of the camera. In recent decades, those adaptions have taken inspiration from mediums such as comic books, graphic novels, and even video games. Drawings, stories,and countless hours of scrutiny from droves of artists telling superhuman tales have been taken straight from hundreds of hand crafted pages and onto the big screen. Marvel Studios has done just that with the creation and release of Avengers: Infinity War, directed by the Russo Brothers. This film is the result of over 20 different superhero flicks, each with their own personal adaption and interpretation of the popular heroes you may have grown up admiring. Each of these films have been helmed by, mostly, different writers and directors, taking characters and stories created by artists from years and years ago. With that being said, each story taken from the drawings to the screen has the personality and interpretation of the one creating the movie,and must be made to appeal to a more general and modern audience. Infinity War is no exception, but the execution is what should be set as the standard for art-to-film standard.
For more context, Infinity War is based upon the “Infinity Gauntlet” story arch from Marvel Comics, written by Jim Starlin and drawn by artists George Pérez and Ron Lim. To summarize the limited-series, the villain Thanos acquires six gems, each holding the power of different concepts of creation. Using a gauntlet crafted to control their power, he wipes out half of the life in al lthe universe with a single snap, to gain the affection of the living embodiment of Death. As that sounds on its own, only those very invested in the lore and storytelling of comic books would find the concept enticing. Therefore, both the story and art of the comics had to be altered to fit the appeal of an audience in 2018. Character designs and interactions had to not only be changed to work in a live-action setting, but also match the expectations of viewers who have watched each film leading up to the event.
Marvel Studios has incorporated a much more humorous tone in their films as opposed to the rather serious and straightforward approach of the original run of Infinity Gauntlet. Characters are in much more modern and shinier costumes, with hyper-advanced technology not seen in any hand-drawn creations and find themselves cracking jokes and quips even in the middle of life threatening battles. The bright colored and sometimes overly-revealing spandex costumes comic enthusiasts may be familiar with have been replaced with much more ‘cool’ and practical outfits. The best example of this would be in Spider-Man’s wardrobe. In the original Infinity Gauntlet run, Pere and Lim had drawn the wall crawler I his iconic red and blue suit as he traveled to space to fight the Mad Titan Thanos. In Infinity War, Peter Parker finds himself on an alien planet fighting in a high-tech costume created by Iron Man himself. This in of itself is both an adaption of an idea found in a different, more modern comic run titled “Civil War” and gives the audience a more familiar and exciting approach to the character while still staying true to the story and art crafted by Starlin, Perez, and Lim. The jokes never seem to fall short or out of place either,a concept that is all but nonexistent in the Infinity Gauntlet series.Characters are written to take the weight of the situation in a much better stride, a theme in Marvel films that has been made to let audiences feel more comfortable watching in an era where humor and excitement allows them to better immerse themselves in a movie and escape the real world for a while.
Visually, Marvel Studios had managed to both update decades old character designs for modern audiences as well as implement designs, costumes, and visuals from other popular comics to appease the hardcore fans. The antagonist, Thanos, sports a relatively lax attire for most of the film, with only a dark tank top, combat pants and boots, and the infamous gauntlet. While the gauntlet has very few changes from its original comic depiction, with perhaps just a bit more regalia, this change of wardrobe is far from the iconic look of the Mad Titan.During the Infinity Gauntlet run, Thanos wears an intimidating set of golden and purple armor, with colors and design accenting the stature and power of the character. While this armor set is included for just a moment in the film, his updated and minimal costume still manages to convey the sense of power that the originally drawn armor did. A character as powerful and determined as Thanos has always been drawn in full gear, ready for war at the drop of a hat, and his modern rendition gives off the sense of known accomplishment in that he no longer requires armor as his mission is already completed in his head. Two of the main Avengers, Spider-Man and Iron Man also sport new, sleek, and updated looks that are actually heavily influenced by popular costumes in more modern graphic novels. Iron Man, in the Infinity Gauntlet series, wears the classic and arguably clunky looking suit of power armor that would never transition well to the high-tech themes that the character has established in recent films. The work around to this was to incorporate a design seen in Invincible Iron Man Vol 2 #25, in which Tony Stark implants technology into his own bones to summon an Iron Mn suit on a whim. This idea and design is adapted from the hand-drawn pages to the big screen by having Stark create a small device on his chest which houses Nano-technology, allowing the same quick suit up. Spider-Man is another character that is given an upgrade for the big screen. Traditionally,Spider-Man faces off against Thanos wearing his classic red and blue suit, but modern audiences know by now that there is more than enough technology in this established universe for him to have a better edge in the fight. This presumption is answered by loosely-adapting the Iron Spider suit, first seen in The Amazing Spider-Man #529. Keeping true to the comic origin, this suit is crafted by Tony Stark for Peter Parker and even sports the four iconic mechanical spider legs protruding from the back. The only difference here would be the overall costume design, which strays from the red and gold colors that are seen on the pages. The updated design features more simple reds, blues,golds, and plenty of bright shiny lights. These three characters are the biggest example of how the drawn designs over decades of comic book artists work were adapted to film.
The overall motivations and executions of these artistic concepts has been adapted for a broader audience as well. The art of Infinity Gauntlet showcases more graphic situations than what most would accept in a 2018 comic book film. Characters being beaten to death, turned to glass, suffocated, and made into disgusting husks of their former selves were drawn by Perez and Lim as both a choice of artistic choice as well as compatibility with the severity of the story written by Starlin. The depictions of these brutal scenes were a product of the times in which these stories were drawn, where they were reserved for the pages of comics where only the dedicated would venture to. With a major blockbuster film, Marvel Studios and the Russo Brothers had adapted the story to take the themes of life and death in both a visual and conceptually different direction. That started with both changing the motivation of the main antagonist, Thanos. In Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos wishes to win the affection of Lady Death by creating both death and misery for the universe, as explained before. In Infinity War, this same character explains his motivations as “a simple calculus”, where resources are finite, and populations expand too greatly to feed every mouth. This concept is much more familiar with an audience in 2018, where some viewers were even split in the logic of the villain. Over population is absolutely a current problem, and some were very vocal in their understanding of Thanos’ plan, although terribly immoral. Death in general is toned down in the film, where Lady death is not a character a tall, and the gruesome deaths and suffering characters go through in Infinity Gauntlet are either reworked or left out altogether. While many of the iconic moments Perez and Lim had drawn make their way to the big screen, such as Thanos’ infamous snap or fights between the Avengers and the Mad Titan, Marvel Studios had chosen to rework much of their artistic choices to create something millions of fans would enjoy.
Overall, Infinity War does exactly what it set out to do. Create a film adapted from one of the most famous comic series for an audience of literally millions. Concepts and motivations from heroes and villains alike are updated to appeal and relate to the same issues that plague the world in 2018. Designs created by artists over the course of 20 years are revamped to give viewers a fresh take on superheroes they had grown up looking at. The art created by Jim Starlin, George Pérez and Ron Lim had been taken and reworked by a new generation of artists to evolve a legendary comic book into a historic film. Marvel Studios had taken their reputation from creating art through comic books to using that same art for the cinema and will continue to do so.
